Abraham Lincoln: A Biography

17. The Signs Look Better

CHAPTER XVII -.~ The Signs Look Better 1f INC 0 L N'S bipartisan policy threatened to break down. L From the beginning he had favored loyal Democrats with important positions and commands, both as a means to national unity and because he welcomed the services of every loyal man regardless of his politics. This policy had proved especially effective in helping to hold the border states and in encouraging a Union spirit in those southern counties of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio which had shown strong Southern sympathies. Some Democratic leaders like Stanton, Ben Butler of Massachusetts, and John A. Logan of Illinois became outright Republicans. Others tried to co-operate in a nonpartisan spirit. But this very situation offered ambitious Democratic politicians of minor stature a welcome opportunity. The Democratic Party came under the leadership of men of narrow vision or doubtful loyalty who were incapable of resisting the chance to reap political profit from the government's embarrassments. The first serious Democratic defections came when Lincoln issued his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. Many Democrats who had previously supported, or at least refrained from opposing, a war to save the Union, now became more critical in their allegiance; others became furtive or open enemies of the government. Throughout the North-but especially in those counties of the Midwest where the majority of the people were of southern antecedents-secret societies, known variously as Knights of the Golden Circle, the Order of American Knights, The Signs Look Better 377 and the Sons of Liberty, enrolling thousands of members, spoke openly in favor of the Southern cause, and committed acts of violence against the government. Recruiting officers were found murdered. Lonely countrysides were terrorized. Union agents reported a maze of plots and conspiracies, one to seize prison camps and arm Confederate prisoners; another, inspired by Confederate agents in Canada, to set up a Northwestern Confederacy. These seditionists were known as Copperheads, because of their practice of cutting the head of the Goddess of Liberty from a copper penny to wear in their coat lapels, and from the venomous snake of that name. With the outbreak of armed conflict, Lincoln had dealt sternly with "the enemy in the rear." On April QQ, 1861, acting under an opinion from Attorney General Bates, he authorized General Scott or any officer in command to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, in case of necessity, along the railroad line from Washington to Philadelphia. As suspected seditionists were hustled off to military custody, legalistic old Chief Justice Taney, taking the position that only Congress was empowered to suspend the privilege of habeas corpus, offered a blistering opinion on Lincoln's usurpation of power and warned him not to violate the laws he had sworn to uphold. "Are all the laws, but one to go unexecuted," Lincoln replied, "and the government itself go to pieces, lest that one be violated?" But no law had been violated, he maintained, because the Constitution does not specify whether Congress or the President shall judge of the necessity of suspending the privilege of habeas corpus. Lincoln declared that he would consider himself faithless to his oath of office "if the government should be overthrown, when it was believed that disregarding the single law, would tend to preserve it." Arbitrary arrests continued to be made, and in the autumn of 186Q Lincoln denied the privilege of habeas corpus to all persons imprisoned by military order. The next year, on authority granted by Congress, he suspended it throughout the Union when state courts obstructed the draft law. 378 ABRAHAM LINCOLN Soon after Stanton became Secretary of War, jurisdiction of political prisoners passed from Seward's State Department to the War Department. Stanton exercised his power ruthlessly, arresting more than thirteen thousand persons for disloyalty. Since most of them were Democrats, arrested frequently in anticipation of seditious actions rather than for anything they had done, Lincoln's political opponents accused him of attempting a political purge. The Constitution "can not be enlarged or abridged to meet supposed exigencies at the caprice or will of the officers under it," declared the Cincinnati Inquirer. "... Exigencies and necessities will always arise in the minds of ambitious men, anxious to usurp power-they are the tyrant's pleas, by which liberty and constitutional law, in all ages, have been overthrown ." Faced by the paradox that always confronts a democratic government in time of war-the necessity of curbing civil...